A splash shield is generally mounted under an engine to block engine noise. Such a splash shield has a structure wherein a sound-absorption material such as polyurethane foam is deposited to a certain thickness on one side of a base thereof formed of synthetic resins such as plastic materials.
A conventional method of producing a splash shield includes compounding a resin, injection-molding the resin to form a base, foaming a sound-absorption material, attaching the sound-absorption foam to the base, and subsequent post-treatment processes. However, such a method is not efficient in terms of process configuration since the method requires separate fabrication of the base and the sound-absorption structure and attachment using adhesives.
Further, although attachment of the base and the sound-absorption structure has been performed using adhesives, the use of the adhesives becomes difficult as the structure of the splash shield becomes complicated and the adhesives are disadvantageous in terms of physical performance of the splash shield.
To solve these problems, studies have been conducted to fabricate a splash shield in which a base is integrally formed with a sound-absorption structure. As an attempt to accomplish this object, a base material containing a foaming resin and a sound-absorption material are sequentially stacked in a mold and hot-pressed while foaming and curing the foaming resin contained in the base material. In another method, a surface layer is formed on a base, which has been subjected to injection molding or press molding, by vacuum molding, and a foaming resin is then injected and foamed between the base and the surface layer. However, since the respective processes are performed separately, these methods have problems in that the number of processes is high, processes are complex, and a long process time is required in manufacture of the splash shied. Further, press molding causes decrease in the degree of freedom of product shapes.